


Time's Up

by DanaVee



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Little Pharah dies but it's not as bad as it sounds I swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanaVee/pseuds/DanaVee
Summary: Death is only the start of a new adventure, Pharah realizes.





	Time's Up

Fareeha Amari couldn't move. She hasn't been able to for months. She only knows it's been months because she heard her mother talking to the doctors a while back. With all the machinery and tubes attached to the front of her body, she doubted she could move from the weight of them even if she did have control of herself.

As if to compensate for the lack of movement, Fareeha could feel so much. In that moment, the one thing she could feel was pain. She was sure, so very sure that her tiny body wasn't supposed to feel this much agony before. She would bet that no adult should be subjected to this either. It's not as if she had a choice though. It's not as if she told her body to hate her as intensely as it did.

Fareeha wasn't quite sure where the pain was coming from. She hasn't been acquainted with her own body enough to be able to tell. If she had to describe it though, she would do it in one word. Everywhere.

God, everything hurt. She wasn't sure if she was cursing or pulling on the last thread of hope she had left in her. The final thread of life she clung so desperately to.

The pain had always been consistent. It was like laying down on a bed of red hot coals that never seemed to cool. It was a hundred needles piercing her skin all at once over and over. It was like having the very air from her lungs drawn out before she could savor a breath. She knew the last one was a bit more accurate. That's what the contraption on her mouth was for after all, to help her with the very basic human function of breathing. It wasn't something you get used to though. Fareeha wasn't sure if anyone could get used to the kind of things she was feeling.

Then, without warning, without knowing the hows and whys, without knowing it was even possible, everything got so much worse.

The bed of coals turned into an active volcano. The needles turned into swords. Subconsciously, Fareeha knew how to breathe, but with how much air was actually entering her lungs, she might as well have forgotten. It was like there was a hand, pressing against her mouth, denying her of breath.

She heard crying. Was it her? Was it her mother? It was hard to tell. It could be both. She didn't have time to think. Didn't have time for anything. She'd already run out of it.  
It took her a while to figure out that she was feeling numb. It took her even longer to understand that she wasn't feeling pain. It had been too long since she hadn't.

Fareeha found herself staring at the ceiling. Was it always this white and bright? She could hear crying again. It sounded so distant and muted, as if the person crying were underwater. Turning her neck to face her right was a strange sensation. She could see her view change perspective but the movement felt so foreign to her. In fact, she couldn't feel anything at all. Not the mattress underneath her, not the sheets covering her, not even the cool wind of the air conditioning. She wondered if this was what it was like to be a cloud.

Her gaze landed on the woman at her bedside. Their dark brown hair was disheveled. Their eyes stained with warm tears.

"Mother..." Fareeha tried to say. She wanted to tell her mother to stop crying, but no sound left her throat, not even a breath. Little Fareeha tried to use her voice again and again, but it was fruitless. At this point, Fareeha felt like crying herself.

Then, her mother picked up her fragile body in her arms and pulled them together in a tight embrace. Or at least, that's what Fareeha was seeing. She could clearly see her mother pulling her body close and crying on her shoulder, but that couldn't be. She was still laying down on the bed after all.

For years, Fareeha had resigned herself to the fact that she could never move her body without pain coating her nerve endings, but she decided to take the chance.  
She gingerly stretches the fingers on both hands. No pain.

She slowly slides her arms backwards until she is able to push herself to sit up on the supposedly soft bed sheets. No feeling.

It was such an alien phenomenon to her to be able to just tell her body to move and having it respond, but it was far from not welcome. If it weren't for the fact that there was a disconnect from the body she was in and the body she was seeing, she would have reveled in the new found freedom to move a bit more.

Fareeha was now face to face with her mother and her other self. Her mother was still crying, but even though she was so close, her voice seemed so far away. She tried to call her mother again with little success. When she tried to reach out to hold her mother's trembling hand, Fareeha nearly jumped out of her bed when her fingers phased through her mother's.

The young girl flinched her hand away as if her mother suddenly became the metaphorical hot coals that have been causing her pain for years. Fareeha was too frightened to try again.

Fareeha is sure tears are falling from her own face, mirroring her mother's actions, but as her hands reach up to wipe them away she realizes just how dry her cheeks are. She wanted to cry. She wanted to hear her own voice. She wanted her mother to hold her and have her feel it. She wanted, more than anything, was for her mother to acknowledge that she was right there in front of her and tell her everything was going to be alright.

As she was attempting to use her voice once more, her eyes fell to the limp body her mother was holding. It was her, she couldn't deny it. She hadn't seen her own face in months but she was so certain by the style of the hair and the scar that runs down the arm from a nasty tumble she had back when she was strong enough to play outside.

Curious, she twisted her arm enough to look at her scar on her own arm and not the one on the ragdoll version of herself before her. She furrowed her eyebrows as she stared at every possible view of her arm she could see. Where had her scar gone?

Just as Fareeha thought things couldn't get any more confusing, she heard a rumbling noise beneath her getting louder and louder. It sounded close, closer than the muted tone of her mother's crying at least. Before she could even theorize what the sound was, the ground in front of her began to crumble. The floor began to open up into a small chasm while the tiles broke and gave way to stalagmites, encircling the chasm like a crown.

Fareeha dared to peek from the edge of her bed, to know what was going on. She had enough questions for one day and wanted the power to actually get some answers.  
A dark mist began to roll out from the newly made hole on the floor. After the rumbling from the crumbling floor, all was silent once more.

She left her mother for a second and jumped down from her bed and poked her head in the hole. It was so dark she could barely see anything.

Moments later, she heard light footsteps. Pure instinct took over Fareeha as she dove back to press her back against the wall from surprise. The rhythm was slow and quiet yet consistent. If there were more sounds that she could hear other than the sniffles of her mother, she wouldn't have been able to hear those footsteps at all.

She closed her eyes in a childish attempt to not be seen by whoever was coming. Her heart must have been beating so fast, she thought to herself. She clasped her chest in order to feel its tempo but ended up feeling nothing.

Fareeha began to count the steps. One. Two. Three. A pause. The steps sounded louder now. Four. Five. Six. Another pause.

"Fareeha Amari."

The voice was deep, male and soothing. It was a voice as smooth as how her mother would describe her coffee during Sundays. It was a voice that Fareeha would follow if they asked and she had a hunch that they would. If Fareeha would allow herself to day dream, the voice sounded like the father she never met.

"Fareeha Amari," the voice repeated. "Open your eyes."

She wanted to tell this voice no. Current circumstances have brought the feeling of fear that was not new to her. Fareeha felt this fear the when she fell down the stairs for the first time, when she left the doctor's office for the first time with her mother never letting go of her hand, and only mere moments ago when she couldn't tell who between her or her mother was screaming.

Her eyes were closed and glued to the ground, unwilling to meet the eyes of the one who called. There was a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach telling her that opening her eyes would mean the end. The end of what though? She hoped it would mean the end of all this confusion swimming in her head.

"Look me in the eye, young one." She knew the voice would not ask her again.

With a flutter of her eyelids, she welcomed herself once more to the sight of the hospital floor. She turned her head upwards, first seeing the bare feet of who she assumed was the owner of the voice. Panning her head upwards, she could see the ancient Egyptian garb they were wearing. Finally, when her head was titled as far back as it could go, there she saw the head of a jackal, stoic and calm.

The jackal-headed one knelt down on one knee, lowering himself to her eye level.

"Do you know who I am?"

Her mother read to her a lot every chance she had. She would bring books of every kind just to show Fareeha how many worlds she could go to without leaving her bed or how beautiful their own world was. Both Fareeha and her mother had a favorite book, however. It was a book on Egyptian mythology. Fareeha would marvel at the stories of gods and deities and the fascinating origins of the world. As she stared at the canine face before, she only had one idea of their identity.

Anubis.

There was no mistaking who he was. She nodded dumbly.

"So do you know what you are?"

What. Not who. Over the years she realized not a lot of people cared who she was anymore, only what she became. Sick. Terminally ill. A Forever Patient. Vegetable. It was always 'How is the patient doing?' And never 'How is Fareeha doing?'

She chose to focus on what she was before all that though. A daughter and her mother's little warrior.

At this moment though, She knew exactly what she was.

"Dead," she whispered, softer than the sound of a gentle breath.

"You may rest now, Fareeha Amari," he nodded at her as he held out his hand. "How tired you must be."

Her fingers stretched ever so slightly before putting her hand on top of the jackal-headed god, not quite fully taking his hand. The feeling in her stomach had yet to leave and it forced her to look back at her mother.

She was talking to a doctor now. The tears had dried on her face as she tried to listen to the procedures the woman in the lab coat was telling her about what was going to happen to her daughter's body.

"Your mother has her time." Fareeha supposed this was his way of telling her that her mother would be fine. It still wasn't as comforting as the intent suggested.

She took a final look at her devastated mother, then at her own broken body. It wasn't a place she was eager to return to. Her mother had long since convinced her that the disease wasn't her fault. That she tried her best to stay as healthy as she could despite the protest of her body. Still though, she found it hard to miss her own body as much as she misses her mother. She only regrets not being able to say goodbye.

She glances at the god who was looking at her patiently with a neutral face, "Can I say good bye to her?"

He shakes his head and Fareeha takes a deep breath she doesn't feel. She should have expected that.

She finally gripped the god's hand as if to say I'm ready.

Anubis needed no further prompting, "the time has come, young Fareeha." He took a step and so did she. They took another and another.

Fareeha decided to count these footsteps as well.

One. Two. Three. Four. They were in front of the chasm Anubis came out of.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. And she was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh if you made it here thank you so much! I have a few ideas of where this could go and I'm excited to try them out when I get the time again! This whole fic is inspired by a piece of art (where a little girl is being carried by Anubis) created by sliiva


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